Task Variety in Professional Service Work: When It Helps and When It Hurts

In a wide range of professional service firms, individuals perform a variety of tasks which are highly cognitive and knowledge intensive yet repetitive in nature, providing significant opportunities for learning. In addition, individuals in such environments tend to enjoy considerable discretion in managing when and how they perform their tasks. In light of these observations, we investigate task allocation and timing strategies that may enhance or inhibit learning and productivity for professional service workers. Specifically, we focus on the role of task variety. We use a detailed dataset of 3273 coronary artery bypass surgeries in a private European hospital over 7years to examine the effect of concurrent and non-concurrent exposure to task variety on learning and productivity on a focal task. We find that while concurrent exposure to variety has a positive impact on focal productivity, non-concurrent exposure to variety has a negative impact on it. Our results also suggest that short-term exposure to variety amplifies these relationships.